We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."

So how much do you spend on Eric Hosmer, an early elite prospect call-up? Or Jerry Sands, a supposed impact player of a less-elite level? Or what do you do if Anthony Rizzo and Mike Moustakas are both sitting on waivers after their call-ups last week (some leagues play where you cannot own or bid on a player until they have one game under their belt)? Do you wait for Brett Lawrie and Dustin Ackley?

The answer is never a clear one, and I cannot give you a simple answer. FAAB bid recommendations are a lot like snowflakes. Value is infinitely complex and unique, and it depends on the size of the league (12 teams? Five outfielders?), the format of the league (mixed? AL-only?), the depth of benches and DL spots, and your team's current standing in your league.

What I can tell you, however, is that the timing of the FAAB bid makes a major impact on the expected return of the player, and that timing is rarely considered a factor.

One of the more distinct concepts I can still recall from my days as an undergrad studying economics is the discount factor. Put simply, a discount factor, often an interest rate, accounts for the difference between present and future value. A dollar now is never (okay, maybe almost never, as deflation/stagflation does exist sometimes) worth a dollar in the future.

Let's say, for example, the bank pays five percent interest on your CD account, and that you can open a CD account with any balance. If you begin in year N with X amount of money, and you put that money in the beginning of year N into that CD account, it will grow in value to X*1.05 dollars. In other words, the future value of X is 1.05X.

Conversely, we can evaluate the value of future money now by looking at the same interest rate. Instead, suppose that you will have Y dollar in the future, say because of an impending lawsuit settlement. You cannot have the money from the source now, but will have to wait one year.

If you want to figure out either how much money you would need now to attain Y in one year by putting said money into the CD account noted above (or alternatively how much you should sell the rights to collect on your settlement for), you just need to do the math from above in reverse. If present value (P) times interest rate (R, here five percent) equals future value (again, Y), then Y = 1.05P, or the present value is Y/1.05.

As you will notice, with the denominator being larger than one, present value is lower than the future value. That may seem simple enough, but it is a powerful thing to note that is often ignored in trading and FAAB budgets.

It is to say, alternatively, that a transaction worth Z today is more valuable than a transaction worth Z in the future; that trading for Prince Fielder today is more valuable than doing so in two weeks, and that bidding on Hosmer now is better than bidding the same amount on Anthony Rizzo in the future, even if you think both players are equally valued.

So what does this all mean? It means that shelling out FAAB money on Hosmer in the beginning of May is more valuable than shelling out a similar sum on Rizzo in the beginning of June. The season is only 162 games long, and every day you wait, your opportunity cost is approximately 0.6 percent of potential value.

This 0.6 percent figure could and should be thought of as a discount rate applied to a player's expected production in evaluating FAAB money. It means that a worse player today could be worth more than, or equal value to, a better player who will not be on waivers until some period in the future.

Let's use Rizzo and Hosmer as an example in comparative bidding, and begin by assuming that the two are roughly equal in rate value (production per game). Both are highly-touted, power-hitting prospects that play in offense-suppressing parks with comparable-enough 2010-2011 minor league numbers.

Hosmer was called up about 35 days earlier than Rizzo. If each player, over a comparable sample of plate appearances, is roughly equal to X dollars of production, Rizzo's late call-up induces a penalty value of -15.4 percent. In other words, if you think Rizzo is worth a FAAB bid of X, then your bid on Hosmer should be approximately 15 percent larger than what you would bid on Rizzo.

As the expected waiver pool thins, there is also a scarcity premium that should be considered. Imagine that by the All-Star Break, all of Domonic Brown, Hosmer, Rizzo, Moustakas, Ackley, and Desmond Jennings have been called up.

That could leave Lawrie as the lone "impact" hitting prospect of great consideration that you can count on to be on the big league roster getting a healthy series of playing time. If Lawrie is worth X to you at his call up time, then you better bet more than X, particularly if it is a hard-to-fill position like second, shortstop or third.

This might all seem simple in form, but timing truly is an overlooked value concept in fantasy baseball, where we preach patience.

On one hand, we say "ride out his slump" and caution blowing all your FAAB budget on the first day of the season to acquire a huge prospect like Heyward or Michael Pineda. On the other hand, as noted above, every day you wait is another day the impact of the move you seek to make loses some gravity of impact.

A lot of owners bid conservatively on Hosmer in my leagues, whom I won on every FAAB bet I could place for under $70, because, as they relayed to me, why overbid now when there are comparably valuable players looming out there, some who play premium positions, such as Rizzo, Moustakas, Lawrie, and Ackley (who, in my eyes, is just Kelly Johnson with less power and a bit more batting average). "Why throw away $70 on Hosmer when I know I can probably win Rizzo for less?" one owner relayed to me.

The answer is all of the things I have said above. With Hosmer off the board, there is one less prospective impact player on the waiver wire. You also get Hosmer, even if inferior to Rizzo, a whole month earlier. Particularly if you were employing Luke Scott or Ike Davis at first entering May, having Hosmer today over Rizzo in the future could mean the difference between a league title and another disappointing finish.

Sure, there might be a lock out for the NFL. Sure, we might not have a football season. Sure, I might be relegated to playing fantasy basketball and/or fantasy college football this fall (or even worse… fantasy hockey). But that's not stopping us here at GOI from fantasizing about fantasy football. Today, in my mother's basement (because we're bloggers so of course we blog from my mom's basement) Cubsfan, The 'Bright' One and myself got together for our own fantasy rankings summit. Individually we came up with our own lists for each of the four major positions (QB, RB, WR, and TE) and then I have compiled a composite list for the site.

This is currently a first draft. The biggest factor that will change all of our rankings is free agency. For the most part we assumed free agents will stay with their current teams. There are some players that we assumed will be leaving their current team, but for the most part we ranked players based on where they played in 2010. Preseason (if there is one) and injuries will also most certainly affect out rankings, but for right now. Here are our lists.

This is our final installment in our four part series. Each day for the next consecutive days GOI will post our lists for a particular position. This post is obviously dedicated to Quarterbacks.

The following comes from my latest post on The Hardball Times. Because of the width of our site, to get 4-year home run per FLYBALL park factors, you'll have to go to my above link to THT.

A couple of years ago, former THT writer Dan Turkenkopf tabulated an index of single-season (2009) and four-year home run per fly ball (HR/FB) park factors. I have griped plenty about using HR/FB rates over home run per outfield fly ball (HR/OFFB) rates in tabulating xFIP many times in the past, most recently last week, because HR/FB rates include pop-ups (IFFB), which can never be home runs. The data, over large samples, may be insignificant in difference overall, but why use bad data and skew the margins? It's like Fangraphs' incomprehensible decision to use strikeouts per at-bat (K/AB) instead of strikeouts per plate appearance (K/PA) to calculate strikeout percentage*. (Dave Cameron has indicated that recalibrating Fangraphs' database would likely be a cumbersome process.)

*Here are two examples why Fangraphs' K% calculations, done as K/AB, make no sense. First, assume player X has a particular K/PA in year N. In year N+1, he maintains the same K/PA rate, but increases his walk rate. Though his K/PA remains stable, Fangraphs would report his K% as having "increased," imparting negative stigma and poor analysis by persons who are not aware that K%, not on the same scale as BB% (calculated as BB/PA), does not per se indicate actual strikeout skill. Likewise, players with higher walk rates exhibit disproportionately high strikeout rates.

Ryan Howard, for example, has a career K% of 31.9 percent on Fangraphs, but has only struck out in 27.5 percent of his total plate appearances. For Howard, who strikes out a lot, this may not matter or make much of a difference if you analyze him, but for a player like Prince Fielder (career 22.1 percent K%), it does. Fielder has struck out in only 18.6 percent of his total plate appearances. On the surface, it would seem as though Brennan Boesch (20.4 percent K%) and Ryan Braun (20.5 percent K%) are "noticeably" better at avoiding strike three, but are in reality substantially the same, owning respective K/PA rates of 18.1 and 18.4 percent for their careers.

Other high walk "strikeout" sluggers, such as Geovany Soto, have K/PA rates that are lower than low-walk players with lower K% rates. Some say "well you can't strike out in a walk, so why use plate appearances in the denominator," but you also can't strike out in a hit or walk in a strikeout, and yet we accept plate appearances as the denominator for walk rate (BB%). Plus, just logically, shouldn't K% represent how likely a player is to strike out when he comes to the plate? Why make Shin-Shoo Choo's year-to-year K% like comparing apples to oranges because of a fluctuating walk rate?

Particularly where your data has an abnormal pop-up rate, HR/FB-tabulated xFIP loses a lot of its value. In fields like Oakland where there is a lot of foul territory, and in parks like Wrigley, where there is practically none, the differences in HR/FB and HR/OFFB rates might make a difference. The difference may be a couple of home runs at most (park factors only apply, in theory, in a half-step, as a player's expected number of home games is just 50 percent), but in a game of inches, such could affect Z-Scores, data distribution, etc. If memory served, HR/OFFB has also shown to be less volatile year-to-year than HR/FB.

Because I have such a penchant for HR/OFFB-based calculations, including them as a data point in my xWHIP Calculator, I asked a favor of Dan, who has in turn tabulated an index of HR/OFFB rates by ballpark using data from 2006-2009. We did not have the necessary 2010 data offhand to tabulate 2007-2010 rates, but hopefully this offseason we will be able to plug in 2008-2011 data for a fresher version of these numbers.

As with Dan's 2009 post on HR/FB park factors, certain parks have less data, are weighted similarly (but without the same old data to affect the weights), and may not be as reliable. The data below regards old Twins Stadium (the Metrodome), while the Mets' and the Yankees' Park Factors are from one season only. The Nationals' Park Factor also only uses two seasons worth of data, and is weighted at 5 and 3. All other parks feature four-year weighed factors of 5,3,2,1.

Without further ado, here is the goldmine of data you've probably always wanted, but never had (at least not that I was aware of) until now, ranked from most-to-least home run inflating per outfield fly:

Sure, there might be a lock out for the NFL. Sure, we might not have a football season. Sure, I might be relegated to playing fantasy basketball and/or fantasy college football this fall (or even worse… fantasy hockey). But that's not stopping us here at GOI from fantasizing about fantasy football. Today, in my mother's basement (because we're bloggers so of course we blog from my mom's basement) Cubsfan, The 'Bright' One and myself got together for our own fantasy rankings summit. Individually we came up with our own lists for each of the four major positions (QB, RB, WR, and TE) and then I have compiled a composite list for the site.

This is currently a first draft. The biggest factor that will change all of our rankings is free agency. For the most part we assumed free agents will stay with their current teams. There are some players that we assumed will be leaving their current team, but for the most part we ranked players based on where they played in 2010. Preseason (if there is one) and injuries will also most certainly affect out rankings, but for right now. Here are our lists.

This is our third set in our four part series. Each day for the next consecutive days GOI will post our lists for a particular position. This post is obviously dedicated to Running Backs.

The 'Bright' One did not create lists coming into the summit and reluctantly created partial lists for wide outs and running backs during the discussion so his list is currently not as complete as Sexy Rexy's and Cubsfan's lists

The following is my latest article for The Hardball Times, and another entry in a long series of posts about my man crush on fantasy ace Dan Haren.

All stats are current through June 14.

There are many popular memes about "partial-season" players in baseball. Adam LaRoche and Mark Teixeira can't hit in the first half. Kosuke Fukudome can only hit in April, while CC Sabathia can't pitch in April. And, of course, the one that inspired this writing, the notion, largely perpetuated by Matthew Berry and the folks at ESPN, that Dan Haren can't pitch after the All-Star break.

Some of these myths have some result-based credence to them (Teixeira, for instance, has a career slash line of .237/.348/.427 in April (.775 OPS), whereas his career OPS marks in May, June, July, August and September are all above .900), but do they, particularly the Haren one, have "predictive" substance behind them?

First, let's look at the pitcher Haren has been for his career. In short, he has been about as consistent and elite a pitcher as there is. Over the course of his eight-plus years in the major leagues (2011 is his ninth), Haren has proven to be very durable—pitching 216 or more innings each of the past six years, and on pace to do so again this year—and has compiled a 3.59 ERA and 1.18 WHIP along with 1338 strikeouts to only 339 walks over 1561 major league innings.

On the peripheral level, the surface checks out, as validated by a 3.60 FIP, a 3.55 xFIP, a 3.84 tERA (this tends to be a higher figure than FIP, though scaled to look like ERA), and a strong strikeout rate (20.7 percent K rate versus an 18.0 percent MLB average) that comes from the ability to induce a good number of swings-and-misses (career 9.7 percent swinging strike percentage, MLB average is 8.4 percent).

Even his batted-ball normalized numbers check out, as Haren's expected WHIP and eFIP check in at superior rates of 1.23 and 3.69, respectively.

Haren is also a relatively neutral batted ball-type pitcher (career 1.20 GB/FB ratio, 0.78 GB/AO ratio) who has played in relatively neutral home run-inflating parks (Angel Stadium, with a home run-per-outfield fly ball (HR/OFFB) park index of 102, is the most home run-inflating park of his career), though he has never experienced any type of home run luck (career 11.5 percent HR/OFFB percentage, 11.3 percent MLB average).

As a flyball-neutral pitcher with good strikeout rates and low walk rates, there are very few, if any, holes in Haren's game. More inspiring, however, is Haren's consistency. Since his breakout year in 2007, Haren's relative ERA indicies have been as follow: 138, 139, 142, 106*, 148.

All in all, with Haren, what you see is what you get, and you tend to get what you paid for.

In Roto leagues, full-season expectations are everything, but in H2H leagues, or micromanaged Rotisserie leagues, splits are important. As any Alex Rios owners last year can tell you, as much value as a player puts for in the first half, irrespective of his end-of-season line, if his second half is nerve-wrecking, not only can he make you forget all the good he did for you, but a front-loaded player can cause you to nose-dive from the top of your league's standings.

Noting how great Haren's end-of-season statistics have been over the past half-decade of baseball, let's investigate whether or not he truly is one of these "front-loaded" players you need to deal rather than hold.

First, the results. Per Baseball Reference, Haren's second-half results have not been up to par with his first-half surface stats. Though Haren is the owner of a robust 3.21 ERA and 1.09 WHIP with 751 strikeouts to 181 walks (4.15 K/BB ratio) over 880 innings pitched in the first half for his career, his career second-half numbers clock in at a 4.07 ERA and a 1.30 WHIP with an equally good 7.8 K/9 ratio (587 strikeouts over 680.1 innings pitched), but more walks (158, for a 3.72 K/BB ratio).

Now, a 4.07 ERA and 3.72 K/BB is not horrible (keep in mind the league-average ERA and K/BB over this period were approximately 4.40 and 2.00, respectively) nor something to sneeze at, but in light of his career end-of-season numbers and stellar first-half numbers, you can understand why owners generally want to sell Haren by July.

But is this "sell, sell, sell" attitude particularly warranted, despite the results? Or does it breed a market inefficiency that you can exploit to your advantage? Because we at The Hardball Times are bigger fans of inner, rather than outer, beauty, let's dig a little deeper into Haren's first- and second-half splits; beyond the results, and into the process.

Based on the FIP formula, Haren's first- and second-half splits are a lot less extreme than they seem by ERA standards (0.86 points). Though Haren tends to walk a few more batters in the second half (4.4 percent uBB versus 3.9 percent), his second-half FIP (3.70) is only 0.40 points above his first-half FIP (3.30). This split is less than half as severe as his ERA split, and relative to his career FIP (3.60), it is not too far apart from what you are paying for.

Digging further, we also find that Haren's second-half batted ball profile indicates that he tends to give up fewer fly balls and more ground balls in the second half compared to the first half. Whereas Haren's career first-half flyball rate is 38.8 percent, his second half rate is 34.4 percent.

In fact, if we calculate Haren's "exFIP" (exFIP is xFIP calculated with HR/OFFB in place of HR/FB, done because a popup can never be a home run) we find the split even tinier, with a 3.35 first-half exFIP and 3.63 second-half exFIP. Haren's expected WHIP splits between his first and second half are even smaller.

So, while it is clear that Haren has been a better pitcher in the first half for his career, his peripherals say that the talent splits between the first and second half for Haren are relatively marginal. Pitchers tend to wear down over the course of a 162-game season, and the cold April weather warms up by July, so I was not be shocked to find that second-half league ERAs tend to be higher than first-half ERAs.

In 2009, for example, the first-half league ERA was 4.09, while the MLB average ERA was 4.57 in the second half. The same was true in 2008 (4.19 versus 4.52) and 2007 (4.36 versus 4.61). 2010 was a different story (4.16 versus 3.98), but the second half of last season marked the beginning of the "new era of the pitcher" everyone loves to write about. In 2010, in fact (and ironically), Haren's first-half ERA (4.60) was higher than his second-half mark (2.87).

So why the major ERA split for Haren?

For one thing, Haren has always been a bit lucky with balls in play during the first half, while the opposite can be said of his second halves. For his career, Haren's first-half BABIP is .274, while his second-half BABIP is .318. His cumulative career BABIP is .291.

In addition to BABIP, Haren has seen more of his fly balls leave the yard in the second half than in the first half. Whereas Haren has a HR/FB rate in the high-nines for his first-half career, that number is close to 11 percent in the second half (10.5 percent MLB average). That is not too surprising, as every 10 degree increase in temperature tends to boost flyball distance by a couple percent.

So what does this mean?

If you currently own Haren, it means do not panic. You own one of baseball's most elite pitchers, and there is no real reason to sell him, especially at a discount, to try to poach a pitcher who is not a "second half dud."

Haren currently owns a 2.54 ERA and 0.98 WHIP. His peripherals says that, as always, he's earned those numbers. Though Haren is no longer pitching in the NL and, as could be expected, striking out about a half-batter fewer per nine innings, he is currently inducing ground balls and popups at career-best or second-best rates.

He owns a 2.51 FIP, and a 2.99 xFIP that is 35 percent better than the rest of the league. Even xWHIP's more-inflated numbers love Haren, claiming his performance to date to be worth a 3.26 eFIP (4.00 MLB mean, compared to a 3.80 MLB mean for xFIP) and a 1.12 WHIP (top 15 among all major league pitchers, including relievers, with at least one game started).

Haren is not someone to trade away unless you get someone just as good in return, and that's not an easy standard to meet, even in the rekindled era of the pitcher.

If you do not currently own Haren, it means you should exploit the myth that Haren can't pitch in the second half. The myth does not mean you can get Haren for Zach Britton, but it does mean you might be able to trade away a "lesser" pitcher like Matt Garza, Josh Beckett, Mat Latos, or Anibal Sanchez as the substantial majority piece (if not a one-for-one deal) in a deal to get him.

You also might be able to swap out ceiling and risk for reliability, moving Josh Johnson as the All-Star break (and his alleged return from the disabled list) approaches. You might also be able to get Haren plus a useable fantasy piece for your team in what should otherwise be a one-for-one deal (e.g., trading Sabathia for Haren plus something).

While I only have two sports in my wheelhouse (baseball and football), with the U.S. Open about to get underway and the NBA Finals recently completed, I decided I would step outside my comfort zone and discuss things I normally do not talk about. I do not claim to know the first thing about golf or know a whole lot about basketball, but I think I am pretty confident to discuss the psychology of athletes.

In a recent press conference, McIlroy spoke up and defended LeBron James. As a fellow athlete who has also gotten criticized in recent years for coming up short when he needed to the most McIlroy said this:

I think he’s been unfairly scrutinized. Everyone is going to have bad days – if it’s on the golf course or on a basketball court. And with sports these days everything is overanalyzed: stats here, stats there, how has your team combined points in the last quarter of the Finals or whatever. It’s just one of those things.

There is a lot of truth in that. ESPN (who is the main and really sole sports hype machine in America) did all that they could to talk about King James and beat that into the ground. They lead with him every night on SportsCenter, they have the "Heat Index" on ESPN.com, and they were the vehicle for The Decision and thought it was a good idea.

However, it was what the young 22-year-old golfer said next that really took me aback. He said:

If people keep talking about having a bad last quarter all the time it’s going to get to you

If you listened to the way Rory said that comment too you could tell he was talking about himself as well as LeBron. It was just weird yet refreshing to hear an athlete say that these self-fulfilling prophecies these "analysts" talk about will come true. If people keep saying you are not clutch then you start to believe it and then it turn not become clutch.

We all know about LeBron's faults for not coming up in the fourth quarter during the 2011 NBA Finals but many of you may not know about Rory McIlroy's (to be honest I do not know a whole lot either) faults. At this years Masters (the one in which you get the stylish Green Jacket) McIlroy was destroying the competition for three days. Going into the fourth and final day McIlroy was leading everyone by four strokes and was 12 under par. He ended up finishing the Masters tied for 15th place and only four under par. It was called one of the epic collapses in sports. This was not the first time McIlroy was up late in the tournament, was the favorite to win it all and lost.

That Masters weekend I got my entire sports trivia from SportsCenter (see, I told you they are the hype machine) and all anyone was talking about before that Sunday was just how good the (then) 21-year-old was and how he was the next Tiger Woods. Then came Sunday night's SportsCenter along with coverage of the collapse and I thought to myself:

I don't think that kid has the killer instinct the greats do to win.

And I still believe that today.

It is no secret that people play different when they are ahead than when they are behind. People play differently when people are watching them than when people are not. And people play differently when they need to the most and some people fold like a house of cards in the clutch.

Me personally, I'm a folder. That's probably why I blog about sports instead of play them. I can play an easy song on Guitar Hero and start to play it perfectly but then about two thirds of the way into the song I miss an easy note and perfection is ruined. The same holds true when I play Wii Sports. I can bowl the shit out of that game when I'm just chilling alone but when other people are watching and counting on me I just can't do it. I start to get into my own head. I start to over analyze everything. I start to tense up and forgot all the practice I learned. That's just the person I am.

I think this is also the type of person and athletes that Rory McIlroy and LeBron James are. I think they have great talent and I think in all situations beside the clutch they are fantastic and better than everyone out there. But when it's the bottom of the ninth in Game 7, two outs, a runner on third, and their team is down by one, they strike out and fail to hit the home like they would have done in this exact same scenario five innings earlier. Most athletes want the rock. I don't think these athletes do.

This killer instinct is what made Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan so good and probably the best athletes to play their respective sports. There are many players that are/ were above average to great, but what made guys like Michael and Tiger super elite was their ability to be clutch and that drive inside them to put everyone on their back and rise to the occasion.

I am actually not going to fault Rory and LeBron (OK, maybe LeBrown because I still dislike him and want to see him fail just like every other sports fan in America) for coming up short. I think that's who these guys are and that is just what they will be. I think that needs to be the expectation for these fellows. I don't fault Donovan McNabb for coming up short in all those NFC Championship games/ Superbowl 34, I credit him for getting that far. I think unfair expectations has been set on these players and I think we need to temper those expectations.

I don't expect Rory McIlroy to win the U.S. Open. But what I do expect is for him to get a top ten or top five finish. That's I think that is what he is and that I what we should realistically expect from him.

Sure, there might be a lock out for the NFL. Sure, we might not have a football season. Sure, I might be relegated to playing fantasy basketball and/or fantasy college football this fall (or even worse… fantasy hockey). But that's not stopping us here at GOI from fantasizing about fantasy football. Today, in my mother's basement (because we're bloggers so of course we blog from my mom's basement) Cubsfan, The 'Bright' One and myself got together for our own fantasy rankings summit. Individually we came up with our own lists for each of the four major positions (QB, RB, WR, and TE) and then I have compiled a composite list for the site.

This is currently a first draft. The biggest factor that will change all of our rankings is free agency. For the most part we assumed free agents will stay with their current teams. There are some players that we assumed will be leaving their current team, but for the most part we ranked players based on where they played in 2010. Preseason (if there is one) and injuries will also most certainly affect out rankings, but for right now. Here are our lists.

This is our second set in our four part series. Each day for the next consecutive days GOI will post our lists for a particular position. This post is obviously dedicated to Wide Receivers.

The 'Bright' One did not create lists coming into the summit and reluctantly created partial lists for wide outs and running backs during the discussion so his list is currently not as complete as Sexy Rexy's and Cubsfan's lists